Contemporary Western norms of fatherhood emphasise men’s involvement in parenting, providing both emotional and practical childcare as well as financial support. As involved fatherhood requires a lot of time spent with children, without broader social and policy support this tends to conflict with the traditional breadwinner role of fathers. This is particularly true in the post-socialist and southern European societies, where for men long working hours were and traditional forms of masculinities remain a functional part of family life. This study compares the individual childcare and work attitudes of fathers in 25 European countries in the context of wider social norms. The main research ambition is to disentangle the specific macro-level contextual factors, social policies, and norms and politics of masculinities that shape attitudes towards fatherhood at the individual level. We perform multilevel regression analyses combining individual responses to childcare and work attitudes questions of the European Social Survey (ESS), Eurofound’s European Quality of Life Survey (EQLS) and European Values Study with gender equality and policy data provided by the Global Gender Gap Report (GGGR) of the Word Economic Forum. Our findings suggest that while working hours define the capability aspects, broader norms of masculinities and gender equality policies play a crucial role in shaping the agency and the norms of involved fatherhood in European societies.
